1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a printer control system and, in particular, to a printer control system which carries out the print processing and execution of a printer with a job as the operation unit thereof.
2. Description of the Related Art
In processing a series of documents for printing transmitted from a client, a print server employs a system in which the print outputs of the print server to the printer are processed in a batch (that is, in a job). According to this system, when processing a plurality of documents collectively as a job, it is necessary for the client to transmit a schedule attribute together with an instruction to the effect that the documents must be processed as a job.
This schedule attribute includes a before-complete attribute and an after-complete attribute. The before-complete attribute is an attribute to carry out a scheduling operation of a type in which the processings of a job are to be executed one by one in sequence each time a print server receives an individual piece of print document data. On the other hand, the after-complete attribute is an attribute to carry out a scheduling operation of a type in which, after a print server receives a print document consisting of a batch of all print document data relating to the present job, the processings of the job are to be executed collectively.
By the way, while the print processing is being executed in a job unit in accordance with the above-mentioned schedule attribute, there is a possibility that the transmission of the document being currently transmitted may be interrupted because of the failure of the network or the like, with the result that the request for execution of the job may be thereby interrupted.
Conventionally, when the job execution request is interrupted in this manner, the print document data or print document received last by the print server is regarded as the final document and is thus printed. Also, when the print server is crashed while it is receiving the print document data or print document and it is restored later, a similar processing is executed.
However, according to the above-mentioned conventional manner of processing, it is impossible to add a continuously following document to the interrupted job. That is, in order for a user to be able to obtain such print output as imagined, the interrupted job must be cancelled once and, after then, the document must be transmitted again from the very beginning.